Interiors

I’ve been sketching some of the bones as a way of getting to know them.

When you learn to draw the human figure, the classical way is to start by drawing the inner structure of the figure, the skeleton, then to dress it with the muscles and finally to draw the skin as if stretched across the inner shapes.

I still use this approach for life drawing though in a quicker, sketchier way: starting by roughing in the angles of the spine and the volumes of the rib cage and pelvis, then joining the limbs. This way, once you draw the outer layer of the body on top you can make sure everything looks structurally right, avoiding the mistakes of limbs looking like they’re not truly attached or the body looking like it’s not weighted right.

The strange thing I’ve found about drawing bones is that I have to approach them in a similar way. You can see my construction lines in the drawings, how I'm trying to work out how it all connects. I’m only drawing the interior of a body now, but the bones have their own interiors, directional twists and connected volumes. You can see how the bone has grown into its shape. The stresses of force that have applied to the bone in the moving body of the animal gives the bone its shape and you can read into it how it moves and links to other joints.